Using epoll for blocking operations other than file I/O?

[EKC]

Hello,

I am currently using both Memcached and Perlbal as part of a Perl/C
internal web application. I have also written my own non-blocking
single-process web server in perl using epoll via  Sys::Syscall.

I would like to allow my epoll web server to send emails via SMTP.
Naturally I want to do this in a manner than is non-blocking.

What is the best way for a Sys::Syscall epoll perl script to
asynchronously send emails via SMTP? I'm not religious about SMTP
servers.

Perhaps I can open a socket to some sort of SMTP proxy server and
register epoll read/write callbacks to queue an email message? Does
anyone know of such a TCP/IP SMTP queueing proxy server?

Sorry about being off-topic, but I couldn't find a better list for
discussing Sys::Syscall.

P.S., I just noticed 'Gearman' on danga.com. Should I be using Gearman
to address this problem?

Thanks!